Telangana Health department on Monday started to administer COVID-19 vaccine to people who are 60 years or above, and for those with comorbidities in the 45-59 years age grouph. On the first day, 4,558 people from the two priority groups were given the first dose of the vaccine at 93 government and private health facilities.
Till late Monday afternoon, senior officials from the department said that no Adverse Event Following Immunisation (AEFI) cases were reported. However, the ‘AEFI’ column was not mentioned in the media bulletin issued in the night.
While 2,647 people were targeted to be vaccinated at 48 government health facilities, only 2,005 turned up which comes to 76%. And 2,553 out of the 4,112 target took the vaccine at 45 private hospitals, which is 62% of the target.
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Senior officials said that they will increase the number of vaccination centres to over 1,000 in one week. In the coming days, people will have the more option of of choosing a hospital of their convenience.
Health Care Workers (HCW) and Front Line Workers (FLW) were given first and second dose of the vaccine on Monday along with the two groups . The first dose was administered to 300 HCWs and FLWs, second dose was given to 86 of them.
State Director of Public Health G Srinivasa Rao said people can choose to register for vaccination either online, or on the spot registration at vaccination centres.
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State Chief Secretary Somesh Kumar along with Health department's principal secretary SAM Rizvi visited District Hospital in King Koti to take stock of the arrangements for the vaccination programme.